Love Locked

part one

It's a funny thing, a rubber chicken. Why this came to my mind, I don't know. I just found myself staring at the small chicken in my hand, wondering why such a thing exists.

Sure I could have Googled it, and gotten the answer in seconds, but, from past experiences, I knew that some things were best left unknown. (Google, why must you have so much weirdness on you?)

I set the chicken down and started at the blank, textured ceiling of my room. How long had I been lying here? A few minutes? A couple hours? It was hard to say. For all I know, I could have been here for years, and today was my 87th birthday. Woo, happy birthday me!

I lifted my head to look at my alarm clock sitting at the end of my bed. It was seven fifty in the morning, and I could not get myself to fall back asleep. My parents were both asleep in the other room at the end of the hall, and I had the house to myself. And that was nice, but everything that I could do was too loud and would walls them both up. Which would not be a pleasant sight to behold.

And so, I was just lying here, bored out of my mind, contemplating the existence of the rubber chicken.

Amazing, I know.

Eventually I gave up on that, and pulled my phone off my nightstand. Two new messages. One from an unknown number, and the other from my girlfriend, Emily.

Deleting the first message, I went to hers, and read it, moving my lips like I was reading it aloud. She wanted to meet up today at the mall layer and have a lunch date together. Yeah, I should be free to do that today.

Only, I wanted one thing to be different about this situation. I didn't want it to be a date.

Emily is nice and all, sweet, kind, and lovable, but I just wasn't feeling it. I liked Emily, sure, but did I love her? That's a different question. One that I have asked myself ever since we started dating five months ago.

I've dated boys back in middle school, like two, and both times, I just wanted to fit in like everybody else. They had a boyfriend? Well, congratulations, so do I! I'm the end, it wasn't working for me. That's when I decided to be bicurious and check out the other options, thinking that my disinterest in dating guys was because I was a lesbian.

And with Emily, I thought I felt something. I felt a pull towards her, like I needed her, but after we started dating, that pull faded into friendship. It lasted for a few days, and went away. This is when I knew that I was asexual aromantic.

But my problem isn't that I don't accept myself, or that I can't Come Out to my parents. I did that once already, so I can do it again. No, my problem is with Emily, and how I tell her that I don't have feeling for her like I used to. I'd like to stay friends, but I don't want a romantic relationship. She's a fragile person, and I have any a lot of time helping her stand up tall. I don't want to be the one to break her down in her moment of glory.

So I've been lying. A lot.

Fake kisses, fake cuddles, fake love. All just for her because I don't know how to call it off. It's like going to your cousin's house and you absolutely hate them and they talk trash about you behind your back, but you have to keep a smile on your face and always say you love them, no matter how shitty they really are.

I told her that I would see her there, set my phone down, and closed my eyes. Sighing, I opened them and stared at the ceiling again, watching the never-moving bumps never move.

~•~

I got out of my car to meet Emily at the JCPenneys mall entrance. As expected, there she was, browsing a clearance table with some old Spring fashion. She looked up as I walked in and smiled her flashing white smile.

"You made it!" She said, excited that I was there with her.

I mimicked her expression. "Of course I made it! I told you I'd be here!" We hugged each other in public, which seemed pretty normal to everybody else months store because I see two girls hugging all the time. When it's two boys, then they start to notice. Of course.

This hug was real, real emotion, real friendship. Everything else romantic that follows is fake.

Emily kissed my cheek. "How have you been? Did you sleep okay? Do we need to have a coffee date before our lunch date?"

I laughed playfully. "Oh, come on, Emily. I'm fine. You're as bad as my mother. So I woke up a little early, not my fault!"

Emily looked at me skeptically and put a hand in her hip. "I know for a fact that you always need coffee. You can't seem to live without it. It's like coffee is your blood, and by missing it one day, you're going to die. Dunkin' Donuts should change their saying to 'Angela runs on Dunkin'!'" She laughed. "You're their number one customer."

I rolled my eyes. Emily has an interesting sense of humor that I didn't always get. She laughs at her own jokes, and constantly waits for people to join in. Even if it's an obviously fake laugh, she'll accept it.

When she was done laughing at her own joke, Emily looked up at me with her dark brown eyes. Her freckled cheeks pink from all the laughing she did. (She's her own kind of special.) She smoothed out her short, choppy hair, and smiled. "Shall we be going?" She held out her arm for me to take.

"I guess." I took it, and we strolled through the store, heading for the center of the mall.